182. Stay-in strike

During the first decades of the 20th century, Spain saw the rise of several radical left and right groups that continually vied for power against the largely ineffectual civilian government.
On the left the groups included the socialist Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) and its more radical rival the anarcho-syndicalist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT).

In the southern Polish city of Kielce, in the late 2000s, a public bus company, MPK (Miejskie Przedsiębiorstwo Komunikacyjne), employed around 630 people and ran 160 buses regularly in the city. For several years, the company had been struggling to survive. It had been put under a traffic planning authority, ZTM, which controlled business operations and pushed it into debt. Working conditions were also unfavorable: wages were low, bus schedules didn't allow drivers regular breaks, and it became difficult for the company to hire new employees.

The Soviet forces that liberated Poland from Nazi occupation after World War II installed a government under which workers, employed by state-owned businesses, could not organize or represent themselves. During the 1970s, frustration with the one-party system grew and by the end of the decade, the Polish economy was near collapse.

On June 30, 1980, the government announced a 'reorganization of meat distribution' which resulted in an immediate 60% price increase and greater difficulty in obtaining meat.

“This is how every worker feels it: with varying degrees of clarity they feel themselves living at a moment that could be decisive for their class, a moment in which all can be staked, everything risked, and perhaps everything lost.

Before 1973, Uruguay had been one of few countries in South America with a near perfect record of political stability and a strong democracy (others included Chile and Costa Rica). The military coup in 1973 came as a profound shock to Uruguay. To make matters worse, this once peaceful nation was now living under a regime that used fear, threat, and intimidation to keep control of its populace.

Following World War I, Canada was suffering massive unemployment and inflation. A wave of unsuccessful strikes across Canada, the 1917 overthrow of the Tsarist regime in Russia, and the growth of revolutionary industrial unionism created an atmosphere of labor unrest in a country that had almost no labor regulations. 

In March 1919, diverse labor leaders met in Calgary in Western Canada to discuss the creation of an industrial union to be called the One Big Union to work for higher wages, improved working conditions, official union recognition and collective bargaining.

During the Cold War era, Albanians endured the totalitarian rule of Enver Hoxha. When Hoxha died in 1985, Ramiz Alia took over a Communist country with a history of repression and burdened by massive debt, poverty, and widespread underdevelopment. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall and facing mounting pressure from the Albanian populace, Alia instituted modest political reforms in early 1991 and on March 31 held the Albania’s first free and open elections in 60 years.

In 1987, in order to cut costs, the Pittston Company chose to negotiate directly with the United Mine Workers Union (UMWA) at its own coal mines instead of with the Bituminous Coal Operators (BCOA) group which had previously regulated employees’ health and retirement packages.  However, in 1988, the Pittston Company ceased contributing to a benefit trust it had established in 1950 for miners who had retired before 1974.  This decision left between 1,500 and 1,700 retirees, widows, and disabled miners without healthcare.  The company also doubled its healthcare deductibles and

In December 1936, autoworkers at General Motors' (GM) plants across Michigan staged multiple sit-down strikes, the longest of which lasted 44 days.  The workers originally demanded that GM recognize their union, the United Autoworkers of America (UAW) as the sole bargaining agent for all GM employees.  The autoworkers also demanded that GM end all discriminatory practices against its workers and relax efforts to speed up production.

The cargo division of Swiss Federal Railways (SFR) had repeatedly been suffering financial deficits for a few years and even changed top management. On March 6, 2008, SFR announced a major restructuring plan that involved shutting down its maintenance workshops; more than 400 jobs were to be cut as a consequence. 126 jobs were to be cut in the town of Bellinzona, Switzerland. These workers represented SEV (Transport Workers’ Union), UNIA (an active trade union in service industries), and Transfair (a Christian trade union).

Prison camps were set up in Russia by the Bolsheviks soon after the October 1917 revolution and the scale of imprisonment expanded enormously beginning in the late 1920s, with most prisoners forced to labor, especially in mining, logging, and construction. From the 1930s through the mid 1950s, camps around the country contained millions of prisoners (from common criminals to political prisoners such as dissidents and opponents of the regime) working in inhumane conditions. Many died due to overwork, extreme climate, disease and malnutrition.

In the late 1980’s, Poland was nearing the end of almost 40 years of postwar communism as part of the Soviet Eastern Bloc. Out of labor organizing earlier in the decade emerged Solidarność (Solidarity), the first non-communist party-controlled trade union federation in a Warsaw Pact country (see Polish workers general strike for economic rights, 1980). Shortly after the rise of Solidarity, the organization expanded into a larger social movement, appealing for economic reforms, free elections, and increased political participation of trade unions.

Misr Spinning and Weaving Company is the largest public sector Egyptian textile company, employing 27,000 workers in the mid-2000s.  The company is located in the Nile Delta town Mahalla al-Kubra and had a history of workers protests, the most significant of which occurred in December 2006 when about 20,000 of the company’s employees struck (see "Egyptian textile workers strike for bonuses and prrotest corruption, 2006").

On March 3, 2006, Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmad Nazif announced that all public-sector manufacturing workers would be given an increase in their annual bonuses. The workers of Mahalla al-Kubra’s Misr Spinning and Weaving Company, the country’s largest public sector textile company employing 27,000 people, were overjoyed at the decree. 

The Dong Il Textile was one of the leading Korean companies whose products were exported to foreign countries during 1970s. At the time, the Korean economy was heavily dependent on the profits gained from exportation of low-industrial cheap products (mostly apparel and chemical products). Dong Il was deemed by the people to be one of those exemplary firms in this context, because it succeeded in “efficiently” producing cheap and mass textile products. Such “efficiency” was possible only because it exploited an abundant supply of cheap labor.

In 2006 Richard Gillman gained control of Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago, Illinois, as he assumed the position of Chief Executive Officer. The company produced windows and doors for building homes and offices. Soon after, there were a series of layoffs and Gillman reduced the number of workers in the factory from 500 to nearly 240. 

On 15 June 1953, in East Berlin, construction workers on the Stalinallee Avenue began to voice their issues with the SED’s (Socialist Unity Party) new regulations. The SED trade union officials, following mass worker emigration from East Germany, increased worker production requirements to fulfill their desired targets. However, the SED trade union officials announced that workers would be paid at the same rate, thus effectively decreasing the value of each worker.

Following World War II, the Soviet Union set up a government, the PZPR (Polish United Workers’ Party), in Poland that did not permit workers at state-owned factories and businesses to represent their interests in labor unions independently from Party commands. After a series of strikes in 1970, workers abandoned their hopes of forming independent labor unions in exchange for prospects of economic growth promised by First Party Secretary Gierek. 

In the face of a stagnating post-war economy, Polish Communist leader Władysław Gomułka, the First Secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR), decided to end government subsidies for food and other everyday items in late 1970. Although the system of fixed, artificially low food prices kept urban discontent in check, it was unsustainable, absorbing approximately one third of the budget. 

On 9 June 1987 workers of the Sindicato de Trabajadores de Lunafil (Lunafil Thread Factory Workers Union, or SITRALU) were given unwelcome news by management.  

The Lunafil factory was located on the main highway in Amatitlan, just 15 miles from Guatemala City (capital of Guatemala).  In that factory workers spun cotton grown on Guatemalan plantations into thread. The thread was then shipped to other factories for Guatemalan workers to use in sewing garments for export, the so-called maquiladoras. 

In December 2013, Argentinian police forces throughout the country went on strike to protest low salaries that failed to match rising living costs. Analysts estimated inflation at approximately 25% that year, although the government of Argentina said it was less than half that rate. The strikes provoked looting, robberies, hundreds of injuries, and over a dozen deaths before the governor of Córdoba, José Manuel de la Sota, conceded to the demand and doubled police force salaries. Manuel de la Sota’s decision prompted police departments in other provinces to follow suit.